Before Therese (Carol - Price of Salt)
by cylonsix
Summary: Did Carol know what she was doing at Frankenberg's? Had she ever?
1. Before

When she started at Sarah Lawrence, she knew her parents did not expect her to finish. Nobody cared whether a girl like her graduated from college, a boy once told her, not even Emma Willard girls. She knew girls from school who would, but she knew he would say they were not like her. She did not know whether she should argue about that, so she did not.

She was barely twenty when it looked like Hargess Aird might propose. She had thought to dodge it, but the war brought a new urgency. Her father told her their marriage might improve Harge's draft number. At school, the girls swooned over his good looks, and his solid prospects. Well, she had better make her peace with it. She liked Harge well enough, she supposed, and she knew what her father expected.

After they married, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Mr. Aird told Harge that it would look poorly to stay home, so he did not. Carol quickly found that she liked the freedom the war afforded; she could fret over her husband from a distance, without him being home to set the kind rules that her parents, now, could no longer impose. All the girls had a young man serving overseas—boyfriend, husband, or pen-pal. Only a few had a job, and just for fun. Women could get those now, with the men away. On weekends, sometimes, the girls goofed around trying on dungarees. What Harge didn't know wouldn't hurt him. She and Abby shared a laugh a few years later, when LIFE magazine ran a photo spread: Teen girls wearing men's plaids and denims.

She also took a little job at a store, just to have something to do. Not for long, she knew, but something for now. She surprised herself by liking it and learning so much so quickly. The customers—women, with their husbands away—liked giving her their orders.

Harge had not been back for long when he told her to quit the shop. His father had said that it wouldn't look well to let his young wife work. Mr. Aird could handle their finances until Harge got on his feet. The future was arranged, he said, so get started on your family. The war had delayed the natural sequence too long already. Carol was nearly 25 and not getting any younger.

It's like playing house, she said to Abby once, like being newlyweds again!

Abby had shown up out of the blue, at the stable one day, where she and Harge liked to ride. Abby had kept her job, even after the GIs came home, but they had dropped her work to part-time. Still, the other girls had all resigned, one by one, as marriage proposals and first-borns arrived. You'll understand once you get married, Carol said to her. She did not understand the look Abby gave her, or Abby's laughter, which was as if at something she didn't find funny.

Often Harge stayed late to meet with clients in the City. Abby came on days off and some weeknights after work. When Carol called Abby the day she realized she had skipped her period, they decided not to tell Harge until they knew, for sure. Sometimes it doesn't take, Abby had said. Best wait. And they had.

Harge did what Harge always did when she told him—called his parents, then went out with the boys. Carol spent the evening alone with Abby, the two of them planning baby names together. Harge had reeked of scotch and cigars when he got home. When he touched her, Carol whispered something about the baby, and pushed him away.

After the baby came, Abby helped Carol care for Rindy while Harge stayed late in the City.

A man's man, Carol's father called Harge. She supposed so, if that meant a man who never spoke to his wife about anything substantial, as if she didn't have a single thought in her head. Well, she told Abby, I have my hands full here. And every magazine repeated the promise: a woman would find her best self in motherhood. It took two years before Carol started to wonder whether she would ever get herself back.

By accident, luck, or design, she had not conceived a second child. She was glad they had Rindy, she told Abby, but she was not sure she could handle losing control of herself like that again. Sometimes it wasn't possible to do that for someone else, she had said when Abby raised an eyebrow.

I think that's that, she overheard Harge tell his father.

His parents stopped asking.

She needed something to keep herself busy, she told Harge one weekend. A four-year-old took so much less time. She wanted "a little project," an antiques venture. It would mean so much to her.

On weekends, Abby started joining her for car trips, looking for finds. When Abby found she could earn as much selling antiques as she had as an entomologist, they started running the store together full time. Nobody takes a woman seriously in science these days, Abby had said bitterly to Carol.

At first, Harge had complained that she should spend more time at home, with him and with Rindy. Once Abby came on full-time, Carol had kept most weekends to play the role of doting wife and mother. She played the role well, she thought, because she had some of life's salt during the week, when Harge hardly knew how she might spend her time.

The whole thing seemed harmless enough. What could happen? Just two childhood girlfriends scouting antiques. She remembered a rumor, once, about a girl at school, but it had seemed unsporting.

Later, after something did happen with Abby, Carol asked about the rumor, which no longer seemed so inconceivable.

After the third time, the time when Harge nearly caught them, she told Abby it could not happen again. It did, but even if it hadn't, everything had already changed—everything she knows about how her body can respond, how to go slow at first and fast only later, the feeling of slender fingers, the feeling of being inside, of hearing a woman's breath get fast and shallow.

Around Harge, she began to withdraw. She hardly knew him anyway, she felt, with spending all of his time in the world of men, even taking his free time at his father's club. Whatever time he spent at home, he spent with Rindy, who she felt Harge and the Airds liked better than they liked her. But, she reasoned, they had never really liked her. She had been only accidental encounter at a friend's debut. At the Aird's home for suppers, she felt a mutual distrust. She had heard Mr. Aird tell his son that the brokerage might take Carol's little shop as a sign of financial or marital distress. It was he who said that the shop was a fine indulgence, but only if it improved the marriage. It was a line Harge later repeated to Carol, when he observed that it had done nothing of the sort. That was the end the shop.

Carol had thought to tell him he couldn't do such a thing, but she knew that he could. He had, before he told her, already called the lawyer and canceled the lease. For a moment, she imagined she might convince him that she could do better managing the business and being at home. Yes, he had said, because she would no longer have the shop. That night, Carol slept in the other bedroom, the bedroom that she now kept as her own. Away from Harge.

She still found moments to share with Abby, but the sex had lost its intensity, and she had concluded that something too frank in Abby's makeup, the very thing that allowed the affair to start, meant that she did not want it to continue. For a time, though, every kiss still represented a rebellion.

Once, Harge set a sort of trap, coming home early to see if she was with a man. He found only Carol in the kitchen and Abby upstairs in the bath, but he was not at ease. That night, they had argued, with him insisting that she no longer stay over at Abby's. While he was saying it, he already knew that she would. She knew, at that moment, that she would never have an interest in him again.

Sometimes, though, he would insist.

A man had needs. A married woman had already consented. Sometimes, when she drank too much, he took advantage. She hated him for it. Hated herself for allowing herself to be vulnerable to it.

He also insisted that she keep up appearances. For his reputation. His career.

At parties, and in the City, she occasionally noticed other women. Of course she noticed other women. Once, when she had far too much to drink, she had admitted as much to Abby. A friend gave Abby the address to a club on MacDougal Street in the Village.

It was the second most illicit thing Carol had ever done.

She had found it terribly exciting, and for a moment imagined that it had reignited her interest in Abby. Perhaps Abby had hoped so as well. They danced—together, then with other women—and Carol knew then, for the first time, that others shared those same perversions of desire. She knew, too, that she could find someone for a tryst. Someone other than Abby. She saw, though, how little she resembled those women. She lived nothing like them. She found the styling so alien to her nature. She did not like the way the gallant butches looked at her. The way the femmes would not. Carol had known, in an instant, the role she would have to play. She did not want to play that role. She had not come so far to play it, but instead to stop playing one.

They had gone, again, a second time, and Carol understood, thoroughly, that she did not fit and did not want to fit. It did not appear to be any way to live. She had felt depressed on the way home, despite Abby's enthusiastic chatter and the phone number Abby had in her pocket.

Months later, at a charity gala, Carol had felt a woman's gaze linger for longer than it should. She found her on the veranda later in the evening. Asked for a cigarette. Found herself speaking in a sort of code she had not realized she knew how to speak.

They had arranged to meet for lunch. Another time, for tennis. The woman's husband was a business colleague of her husband, and the two men were happy to see their wives socialize.

Carol had gone to bed with her once. She knew, then, what she wanted: a woman's softness and curves, her hair spilling on her thighs, the breathy, sibilant _yes!_ that nearly brought on her own climax.

Carol and the woman had talked about their marriages. She told Carol she did this sometimes, went to bed with a woman, when she needed something different, a release. Of course she intended to stay married, she had told Carol. How else did a respectable woman live?

She knew, then, that was not what she wanted. She wanted someone she could talk to. Someone like Abby, but, she sometimes sighed to herself, not no-nonsense, no-mystery Abby.

Carol resolved not to see the woman again, but she did, because … who else?

Briefly, she again considered Abby, but by then Carol was no longer so naïve. She understood that it would be cruel. Abby had not stopped hurting from before.

So she flirted. Men or women. She was a beautiful woman, she knew, both well dressed and well off. People liked to flatter her. She knew this, played with it as she flirted. She knew nothing would come of it, but she continued it because it made her feel alive. At least she could pretend.

Was that all there would be from then on, pretending?

If sex was on offer—surely, sometime?—she would not turn it down, but Carol knew she would have to find her rewards in motherhood. The prospect did not encourage her. Always, though, she thought of Rindy. What would become of her child if Carol did anything more than pretend? How many "Aunt Abby's" could one child have before the grandparents caught wind? Before the husband reached a dangerous level of anger? Would he put her in a hospital?

She had found some freedom in shopping. She took advantage of any occasion to shop, for shopping brought her into the City. New faces, among whom she could be anybody, for a time. She had perfected a particular sort of stare, one she had learned could be taken back with a quick, whimsical laugh. Young men greedy for a sale flirted with her without shame. She sometimes found herself wondering whether they thought she would ever say yes.

She would not say yes.

Not to them.


	2. Gloves

Thanks to those who left reviews! I'll try taking this forward a bit. First foray into fanfiction, so a little uncertain what I'm doing, but feeling simpatico with Carol.

* * *

 _I like the hat, I like the hat._ She said it to herself twice, in a singsong voice. What the hell was that? The girl couldn't have be more than twenty.

As the elevator began to descend, Carol forced herself to regain her composure. When the doors opened, she felt herself pulled along with the Christmas crowd, a mob that made the atmosphere stifling. All Carol wanted was _out_.

On the sidewalk beneath the porte-cochere, she signaled the valet. It occurred to Carol that the sunlight, weak in winter, was failing. Should she head across town where she Abby would be meeting friends for drinks?

She realized that she did not want to see Abby. She knew why. Abby would be able to tell.

She couldn't say exactly what it was that Abby would tell by looking at her, but she knew it would be something, and she wasn't ready to have it seen. No, what she needed was a cigarette and a long drive. Alone. Abby could wait until later, once Carol figured out how to keep a certain look off her face.

For now, she could tell, it was still there.

Impatient, she wondered how long the valet would make her wait. She would not smoke on the street. And the wind! Carol reached into her purse for the grey gloves.

The instant her fingers dipped into the satin-lined pocket, she saw the gloves, on the glass countertop. Herself, leaning in to sign the sales slip. The girl's voice in her ear. The ridiculousness of buying Rindy a train. A train! How ever would she explain it to Harge?

Well, she supposed, the gloves and the train would be the price of flirting.

Carol thought of the way the girl had held her gaze, the girl's slight blush when she realized that neither of them had, at the usual moment, looked away. She shook off a shiver, then found herself feeling ridiculous. The girl could not be much older than she had been when she had first met Harge. It felt like a lifetime ago. She could hardly remember being that person. Still, it brought her a smile when she thought of the girl returning her gaze. Twenty, indeed! All in good fun, thought Carol.

The arrival of the car took her from her thoughts.

Well, she though, there had been no real prospect of returning for the gloves. It would have humiliated her, seeming that she had left them as an excuse to return. She slid behind the wheel, then eased the car into the traffic.

On the exit for the tunnel, Carol's mind wandered. What might the girl do with the gloves? She had no doubt the girl would notice Carol had left them. The girl had seemed to notice everything. Carol had her frank, interested gaze from across the store. The purchase had felt entirely fresh.

Carol smiled at the thought of the girl wearing them, then frowned, realizing that they would wind up on a shelf in the Lost & Found. She preferred the idea of the girl wearing them out for the night. She wondered what a girl like that did in the evenings after work. A single girl, working in the City. It had never been an option for Carol. She thought she would not have minded, but she knew that her time sharing the shop with Abby had functioned more as an escape than a livelihood.

It occurred to her that once the divorce was final, she would find out for sure.

They had missed her at Valencio's, Abby had told her. Abby wondered what Carol had got up to.

Nothing much, Carol had said. Christmas shopping.

If you say so, Abby had said. Carol had laughed when she saw that Abby did not believe her.

Later that night, after she had put Rindy to bed, Carol thought of the girl again, while she waited for her bath to fill. _It's Carol, darling, not Mrs. Aird_ , she could hear herself saying. And what it would be like to—

She had shaken off the thought. It wouldn't do to use another human being for a thrill. Not like that. The girl hadn't asked for that.

Carol knew well enough what it felt like to be touched without being seen.

She wondered, though, what it was that had so captured her attention. If not the eyes, the body, lithe and pert? She had missed those years, in a fashion. Everything had centered, then, on being presentable for some eligible young man and preparing herself for later. Always later, always for someone else. Never for herself.

Carol slid into the bath. It occurred to her that, until recently, she had not even known what her own body felt, or what it could want. Had it not been for Abby, she might have gone on not knowing. It infuriated her that she could not just love Abby. It would have been so much easier. That had been part of the problem, of course.

Carol recalled for a moment the sudden thrill of realizing that she need only return Abby's gaze and not, as usual, look away. She had known it the moment she had recognized that Abby already knew what she was. Carol would not have to cross that line. Abby had already crossed it for her. Carol had simply chosen not to know it.

But that same directness, that absence of mystery and challenge, had let Carol fully explore the contours of that desire very quickly. She had found Abby without dimension. No places to get lost, no complexities stubborn enough to match her own. If she had wanted safe, easy, and predictable, she could have had plenty of that with Harge.

Carol's gaze took in the bathroom's marbled surfaces and gold fixtures, the unmistakable trappings of privilege. She knew she had been privileged, too, to be sent away to school and never to have to worry about work or money. Her mind floated back to the girl. The girl, she knew, would have to worry about money and … a boyfriend? Still, she felt a twinge of envy. Surely an income of one's own made it more possible to know one's own desires or, at least, to live more freely.


	3. Co-worker 645-A

**Co-Worker 645A**

Carol had thrown out the commercial-looking Christmas card when she opened the package that contained the mislaid gloves. The sender had signed only as "Co-worker 645A." It might have been anyone.

Carol imagined the girl turning the gloves over to a manager, or dropping them at the Lost & Found, and a secretary finding the customer and forwarding the lost item.

She had felt sure that she'd left the gloves in the toy department, where she had quite forgotten herself, but now she felt she could not afford to bet wrong. She recalled having set them down to measure some woolen ski trousers for Abby against her hips. Abby had seen them in a photo essay about that Andrea Lawrence girl out at Stowe. The solicitous young man in the ski department had helped Carol located a scarf and sweater Carol hoped would help Abby cut a dashing figure on the slopes.

She retrieved the card from the trash can.

Co-worker 645A would be the young man, if she had left her gloves in the ski shop, she thought. He would, no doubt, hope to make a return customer of her. In that case, the whole endeavor—the gloves, the card—represented nothing more than a mercantile effort.

The thought depressed her.

But what salesman could resist the temptation to use his name? It would not be the young man, she thought. He was not someone who would leave off his name.

Likely, too, the letter "A" might indicated a seasonal hire, a thought that had Carol's mind racing back to the fetching young woman who had caught Carol in her gaze. She flushed when she recalled the conspiratorial tone of their transaction. Carol had known, well before she arrived at the counter, that she had been noticed. She had felt, then, that the girl had recognized something. She imagined, now, that the girl had not known what that was. It had been, after all, the briefest encounter, the kind one walked away from thinking, _What on earth was that?_

The gloves and the card offered her a perfect excuse to telephone. She wondered whether that had been the intent, then felt foolish for thinking it. The card could mean anything.

It would be easy enough to find out. A quick telephone call. Of course, she may well reach an administrative or custodial office. Disappointing, but she could at least offer a light expression of gratitude, good manners, and Christmas cheer.

Still, the thought of hearing the girl's voice and sensing some further interest sent a frisson of excitement through her. As she glanced down at her dress, Carol noticed how little her bra did little to conceal her reaction. Carol pulled her cardigan closed and tried to put the idea out of her head. She should make dinner, and she should focus on making Christmas a success for Rindy, despite Harge's machinations.

She needed a cigarette, she thought, and she needed to talk to Abby. Carol stepped into the glassed in patio to light a cigarette and stare out at the garden. Her eye caught on the outdoor furnishings. In the last months of arguing with Harge, she had forgotten to have them taken in. She should have that tended to, she thought. Carol tried to imagine the spring time, then realized that she would not need to worry about the garden or the furnishings unless she changed her mind about the divorce. She still hoped she could convince Harge to leave the house to her and Rindy—he could take an apartment in the City and continue on with his parents on weekends—but she that would require generosity on his part. His jealousy, stirred when she had confessed her past affection for Abby, had made that unlikely.

Abby.

Where was Abby when Carol needed her? What was Carol to say by telephone, if it was indeed the girl? Oh, sure, she had flirted, but to continue? Carol had no idea how any of this worked. She could not imagine herself playing such a role.

It was not possible to know whether the flicker of interest could have survived the moment. One simply moved on and put the thing out of one's head. One could not, after all, afford to guess wrong. And the girl was a shop girl, for God's sake, and far too young. What could possibly come of it?

Carol knew what Abby would say. Abby would laugh and say that it wouldn't hurt to telephone. But Carol knew it was untrue. It could hurt, in a great many ways.

 _Put on your sleuth hat, Aird_ , Carol commanded herself. She tried to picture herself as the sender. She imagined herself, overwhelmed by the relentless press of Christmas shoppers, taking her break from the toy counter, the sheer boredom of the work causing her to notice the stack of Frankenberg's greeting cards. She imagined, in an extravagant spirit, deciding not to take the gloves to Lost & Found but to post them directly with the card. It occurred to Carol that taking the trouble to locate the sales ticket and copy out the address was a somewhat more surprising action. It occurred to her, too, that the sender had not remained anonymous. She—Carol had decided the sender was the girl— had not signed her name, but she and nonetheless provided her employee number.

Surely, she was over-reading it. She knew it was a bad idea to call. But it was nearly Christmas, and now she had agreed to join Harge at Cy and Jeanette's, so if she was going to call, she had better do it soon.

Carol had just started for the telephone when she heard Florence come in with Rindy, and very soon found herself audience to a long story about how Daddy skated backwards at the skating rink. As she laughed at Rindy's story, Carol felt her finger touch the edge of the Christmas card, secreted in the pocket of her apron.

An hour later, with Rindy down for a nap, Carol picked up the phone to call.

Well, Carol thought, here goes nothing. The call might be brief, merely a customer making an acknowledgement for a kindness.

When she recognized the girl's voice on the telephone, she felt that her heart was in her throat. Carol kept her tone light, though, friendly, if a little too formal. The girl's name, Carol overhead, was Therese.

The girl—Therese—guessed that Carol expected that a man had sent the card.

Carol lied, saying she supposed she had, and Carol and Therese shared a laugh.

Aside from the lie, Carol kept her statements to the obvious: That it was extremely nice of the girl to have sent a card. It was a simple, true thing to say. Disappointingly simple.

Then Carol heard something that surprised her.

"It was very nice waiting on you," the girl said, with a warmth that went beyond the routine.

Suddenly, nothing about the call felt routine.

"Was it? Why?" Carol asked reflexively, and then, without waiting for an answer, heard herself issue an unexpected invitation. Lunch. And not at the vague, unstated date of the social nicety of invitations never meant to be accepted.

Carol understood that she could not let time slip, that to wait was to lose her nerve. She heard herself tell Therese a second lie: that she had plans to be in the city the next day. She made the invitation exact: tomorrow, one o'clock.

And then she heard what she could not believe: Therese had said yes.


	4. It's Just Lunch

**It's Just Lunch**

Carol felt that whatever goodwill she might win by joining Harge for the Christmas party, it would probably not outlast the holidays, but it seemed wise to humor him until after they had settled things. She owed that to Rindy. Abby would understand about the party. None of those thoughts made Carol any more eager to spend the evening at Cy and Jeanette's. However much she liked Jeanette, the mutual disdain between Carol and her mother-in-law outweighed it.

She smiled to herself, knowing that she would arrive at the party having just shared an assignation with a near stranger who she might like to seduce, on an excuse so flimsy that it barely concealed the overture. Harge would not believe it, but Carol she had not meant to spite him when she fell in love with Abby. Now, though, his constant suspicious served only as a painful reminder of what Carol had let slip by. Trying to do right by him had gotten her nowhere. This time, though she would dance with him, he would hold in his arms a woman who had come directly from a liaison that would have driven him mad. Even if nothing came of it, that would keep part of her free.

Carol saw, though, that she had better approach the luncheon as an innocent thank-you, for if she sent her young companion running for the hills, there was not enough whiskey in Manhattan to steady her nerves in time for that horrid party. She wondered how she would know whether the young woman had recognized the electricity that had crackled between them.

She knew how to seduce a man, but that was straightforward. All it took was the right tilt of the head, now and then a grazing touch to her own neck or hair, and a smile like the one Leonardo gave the Mona Lisa, suggestive that she knew something she chose not to give away. Banter came easy, a mix of tendentious questions and coy misdirection. And then? Wait. A man's gaze would become direct. He was a man. What had he to lose, by acknowledging interest in an attractive woman? Even if he had a wife, his sex drive made him only more masculine. He risked nothing. He would not lose custody of his child. No person would label his desire unnatural. With a man, a woman had complete control. She could return his gaze or, at the last minute, look away, as if to say, That's not what I meant at all. It was in good fun. Everyone knew what game they were playing.

In the store, the young woman had not looked away.

Was it quite so simple between two women? Carol felt that it was not. She could not, as she would with a man, merely wait until her counterpart made a decisive offer. She felt that she would have to ask the question that would let the girl say yes.

Perhaps she should take the opportunity to learn about the kind of young woman who might clerk for Frankenberg's, seeing as if she had come from another place entirely. She had struck Carol as thoroughly modern and, perhaps, artistic. Carol could imagine her in a Bohemian set, like the jazz crowd she had begun to notice in the Village. Young people living alone, left to chart their own course. She had looked nothing like the other clerks. She had seemed to know her own mind, and she had said the most surprising things. Carol had found it interesting that she cared little for dolls but felt an enthusiasm for trains. A train, for a little girl! Yes, Carol thought she would like to know more. Much more.

Abby had surprised Carol by throwing her complete support behind Carol's decision to go to the party with "ole' Harge," as she called him. They could have lunch instead, Abby said. She would take a raincheck on a night out.

That was the thing, Carol explained. She had something at lunch. Making matters worse, she said, she could not bear to ride to the party with Harge. Wouldn't Abby come to the party with her?

Abby declined the party invitation, but she promised to drive Carol out. She should arrange an overnight car-park, and Abby would pick her up in Midtown. She knew someone hosting Christmas cocktails in the East Village, and then Abby would carry Carol out to Saddle River.

"You're a godsend," Carol had said to Abby.

"I am," Abby said. "You seem nervous. What aren't you telling me?"

Carol had only laughed, then given Abby the address.

"Two o'clock sharp," she had said, "and don't make me wait."

Carol passed Madison Avenue in favor of Park in order to time her arrival. She would make herself late. She ignored the twinge of guilt. The end would have to justify the means.

She typically blamed the car when she ran late. It was Manhattan, after all. In truth, she rarely watched the time. She did not mind making others wait. Today, though, she had been jumpy all morning and, despite the drive, arrived too early. Arriving early would not do, not while playing the role of the mysterious and—though she hated to admit it—older woman.

That was rich, Carol had thought, while driving in. She was thirty-one. Still, she had no trouble recalling what it felt like, at nineteen, to admire the European sophistication of Hedy Lamarr. Perhaps she should imagined herself as the famed actress arriving on set! She need only play the part and deliver the lines. If the scene miscarried, she might laugh it off and imagine a director shouting, "Take two!" That might, she thought, give her the necessary distance.

The night before, Carol had recognized that though she was in pursuit, she must appear to be in retreat. Play-acting could, she thought, let her create enough contact to signal interest while still leaving enough space to measure whether it was returned.

She had spent a great deal of time thinking about it, but she had not found it exhausting.

As she waited at the curb for the man to take the car, Carol felt a panic at the thought that the young woman might turn out to be conventional. It would mean that Carol had misjudged. She would not like to find herself so mistaken.

Would she be mixed up with some silly boyfriend?

It did not matter, Carol recognized. They would either connect, or they would not. If they connected, a beau could not matter less.


End file.
